It was a causal cab conversation between friends about how we all go overboard with our festivals. Raksha Bandhan was around the corner at that time. The conversation took a serious gender turn when we questioned the need to celebrate a festival, where a brother promises to protect his sister. But why can’t the sister or for that matter anyone belonging to the female gender takes the responsibility of self-protection? Why does she needs someone to do the job? What will she do if her brother is not around to guard her physically or otherwise?

The kick start clicks

The cab fare was paid and we all went back to our protected homes with a thought to sleep over. The following morning kick started the thought between two friends as they were left with just one day for Rakhsa Bandhan. This led us to question ourselves, what next? As advertising professionals, the trail of thought led to a brand name and an idea to execute. Since we were referring to the wrist, symbolizing the thread of love and protection, we named our community page as ‘Wrist Woman’.

Purpose? Make women aware that self-defense starts with self and this includes all aspects of her life; physical, mental, emotional and whatever else it takes for self-protection.

Wrist Woman Facebook page was created with a campaign asking girls and women to tie a ‘rakhi’ to self and on Raksha Bandhan, post the pics on the page and to make promise to take care of their self-respect, dignity and body. Post Raksha Bandhan, awareness was raised on the importance of self-defense through posts, emergency numbers, inspirational videos, creative posts etc.

Wrist Woman spoke with girls and women directly, in order to get a first-hand feedback on the topic and their personal experiences (if encountered). We were surprised to see the intensity of humiliation faced by the women around us. Almost every woman of our society have been harassed, at least once in their lifetime, even if it means a ‘bad touch’. A 6-part series of self-defense videos featuring real women with the real stories were documented on the issue, including the experiences, problems and the solution. Our video contributors unanimously agreed that self-defense should be a part of every girl’s upbringing and techniques should be learned by women of all age groups.

Their life insights encouraged us to make our campaign a movement by creating self-defense survival kit for every woman. We started off with the schools, the place where every girl have their first interaction beyond her home and most importantly, her formative years are the best years for building self-defense mechanisms.

Wrist Woman offerings

To make it all a reality, we formed an expert instructor’s team of martial arts, commandos and drew a customized curriculum, based on their physical capacity and how to combat real life situations. Armed with our objective, expert team and curriculum, school heads were approached to conduct self-defense training workshops for free. Requests soon started flowing in, to conduct self-defense training workshops across Mumbai.

In addition, Wrist Woman is also planning to replicate a similar model at corporates, residential societies with a cost attached to it. Wrist Woman has launched a line of T-shirt merchandise and the profits earned from the sale is used in self-defense training workshops.

Future plans

The future plans of Wrist Woman includes enrolling more schools, making it a part of the curriculum, start a Wrist Woman Training Academy, start helplines and produce short films to propagate the cause. At the corporate level, we want to make it a part of new employee induction training with refreshing courses at regular intervals.

When danger strikes without a warning, it’s your intuition, common sense and presence of mind and body that will help you to save yourself from it.

Visit Wrist Woman at: www.wristwoman.com. You can also get in touch with wrist Woman through email- [email protected]

Chatty Girija

Chatty Girija is one of the founder members of Version Next Digital and initiated a community for women self-defense along with like-minded individuals. It started as an awareness campaign and has now graduated to conduct self-defense training workshops in schools, corporates and residential societies.

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